This is blog for an endangered species-the old Rockefeller Republican. Expect news and opinion from this site.

Friday, July 29, 2005

The Longshot

Charging RINO picked up an interesting op-ed from former New York Senator Alfonse D'Mato on not counting out Governor George Pataki should he run for the White House in 2008. It's interesting that last night in a chat with moderate friends, one commented that Pataki had no chance since he was pro-choice and pro-gay. Even Charging RINO thinks it's a long shot.

Maybe. But you know the Centrist movement within the GOP isn't going to get anywhere with that kind of thinking. If we think that a moderate has no chance of winning the GOP nomination, then we will make sure that prophecy is fulfilled. We as moderates are sometimes too weak willed to see a future when the party will move back to the center. We tend to think the far right is way too powerful for us to challenge them.

But if that's the case, then maybe we should leave the party. I'm not willing to do that because I dare to dream that the GOP can change and that it will change. Maybe it won't be Pataki, but his campaign would lay the groundwork for moderate movement in the way that Barry Goldwater laid the blueprint for the conservative movement fourty years ago. One loss today might mean a big win tomorrow.

4 Comments:

It's true that any moderate Republican is going to have an uphill task with the GOP national nomination. But it's not impossible. Pataki's particular problem is that he's far less charismatic and far less well-known than other moderate Republicans who might aspire to the same office: notably John McCain and Rudy Guiliani.

Also, his future status as a FORMER governor will also hurt him. Very people who aren't holding elected office at the time are elected president. I think Ike is the only one in the last 75 years.

BTW-I forgot to add that D'Amato was Pataki's political mentor. He basically annointed then then unknown state senator as the GOP's standard bearer in 1994 against Cuomo. So he's not exactly an unbiased observer. :-)